Seattle might be nicknamed "Rain City," but it’s snow that’s making it
famous.

On Jan. 12, Seattle residents set the Guinness World Record for the
largest snowball fight. More than 5,800 people showed up to toss snowballs at one another at the
Seattle Center, a park, arts and entertainment campus that includes the city’s famous Space
Needle.

It didn’t snow in Seattle on that day, but there was snow in a small
corner of the city -- enough to make a lot of kids’ dreams come true. Trucks hauled 34 loads of
snow from Snoqualmie Pass, an hour away in Washington’s Cascade mountain range, to the Seattle
Center. It took 162,000 pounds of the white stuff to build the winter wonderland.

The goal? To break the Guinness World Record for biggest snowball fight.
The event, dubbed "Snow Day," was also a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County,
Washington. Seattle businessman Neil Bergquist took three months to organize the playful battle. He
wanted to raise money for kids "by remembering what it was like to feel like a kid."

Although Seattle residents aren’t used to snow, they succeeded in getting
enough people to come out and play. About 6,000 tickets were sold online, and participants were
given bar-coded wristbands when they arrived. The wristbands were scanned as event-goers entered
and left the location, so Guinness had a head count at all times. There were 130 judges for the
official minute-and-a-half snowball fight. Anyone not throwing snowballs was not counted in the
total, Bergquist said.

To raise money for the Boys and Girls Club, companies paid for space to
build their own snow forts. Some highlights included a snow slide and even a few snow toilets. A
Guinness official confirmed the count of 5,834 people. Seattle beat the previous world record of
about 5,400 at a 2010 snowball fight in South Korea.

"We had a lot of fun, set a Guinness record, raised some money for kids,
and everyone had a chance to act like a kid for a day," Bergquist said.